Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Danny Begay has tried to drive out the voices of his ancestors, but his Navajo roots will not die. Summoned back to Arizona to visit his dying grandfather, a former Navajo Code Talker, he knows he has disappointed his hero grandfather. He buries himself one more time in the arms of a stranger before going back to Northern California.

Luci Tohe teaches at a reservation school, safeguarding the health of her ailing mother and little sister’s future, her own life on hold. She doesn’t expect the young Dine warrior she meets to be anything but a distraction from her loneliness.

Danny decides to join the Navy, as a SEAL, becoming the man he knew he was destined to be. Before deployment, he goes back to visit the girl he cannot get out of his mind. A dangerous human trafficking element threatens Luci and her family. Danny vows to protect them all.

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Excerpt

The family gathered afterward at Wilson’s mother’s house. It was hard not to feel the eyes of his relatives on him, just as it was hard not to notice the pats on the back Wilson received. Lopez had been well coached and sought Wilson out to thank him for his service. Danny wanted to leave and told his mother so, barely two hours into the get-together. He’d greeted politely all the relatives he recognized, and those who didn’t come up to him, he figured didn’t want to be re-acquainted. Not like Wilson.

As a youth, just hanging with Wilson would have normally been enough to make the afternoon interesting, but today, with the frostiness between the two cousins, it was forcing him into a dangerous place even the sweet recollection of the night with Luci couldn’t heal. Making matters worse, Wilson had watched as he dropped Luci back to her car at the Blue Coyote and made an off-color remark that irritated Danny further.

The two ignored one another until somehow they wound up waiting to use the only restroom in the house.

Danny’s right eye squinted a little. “We never liked these things, Wilson. You know that.”

“You’ve been gone, what, eight years or more?”

“Ten.”

“Okay, then. Ten. And you can’t spend an afternoon giving these people the time of day?”

“I don’t belong here, Wilson.”

Wilson nodded his head. “Oh yeah. Forgot. You’re the one that got away. You trying to rub my nose in it, huh?.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I don’t want to be here. I’ve done my farewells, and now it’s time for me to adios.”

“You might consider the feelings of your mother.” Danny drilled him with a look that picked a scab.

“You hear the voices? Does the chanting get to you, Wilson?”

He could see his cousin was thinking about this carefully. It surprised him that Wilson didn’t give a quick answer no, which meant he heard the voices, too.

“Holy fucking shit, Wilson. You hear them, too. Just like I do.”

Emma Barnowl opened the bathroom door and their nostrils were hit with room deodorizer, which did a poor job of masking the smell she’d left behind.

“Fuck me,” Wilson said under his breath. “I’m going out back.”

Danny followed his cousin, and within thirty seconds, was standing next to him, pissing on his aunt’s tomato plants, just like they used to do when they were boys of five. To this day, Danny hated tomatoes, especially home grown ones.

After they were done, they sat in metal lawn chairs. Wilson offered Danny a cigarette.

“I don’t smoke, and neither do you, or you didn’t,” Danny corrected himself.

“That’s funny,” Wilson said as he casually lit up and put his lighter and cigarettes back in his rear pocket.

“How come you didn’t wear your uniform?”

“It’s my choice. I didn’t think he’d like it.” Wilson took a long drag on his cigarette and blew it right at Danny’s face, but the wind carried it away.

“Thought you were proud of being a Navy boat guy.”

“I am. Got nothing to do with it. Kind of felt like it would be bragging or something, you know?”

Danny wondered about Luci, halfway expecting she’d drop by the gathering. Was he disappointed she’d stayed away? He couldn’t get the touch of her body against his out of his mind. That might be a reason to stay an extra day or two, but that would be a dangerous road, full of emotional potholes and entanglements. None of his liaisons ever turned out to last, so he figured it was better to remember her the way he’d left her. He saw her proud straight shoulders and those tight jeans encase thighs and a world-class ass as she walked toward her car and didn’t look back once. He knew the only good ones were the ones who didn’t look back.

“Look, Danny, I’m going to say this once, and then let you go. I’m sorry we got off to a bad start after so many years.”

“I was surprised you were around. Didn’t expect it.”

“So I was right, you’re not happy to see even me.”

“Again, putting words in my mouth.”

Wilson looked down, eyes landing on the scuffed cowboy boots, which were a mismatch to the clean suit pants and white shirt he wore. “I left this place with a lot of demons. I think I got just as many, maybe more than you, cuz.” Wilson took a final drag, stomped it out on the patio, and then threw the pieces into his mother’s vegetable garden.

A slight breeze shivered its way down Danny’s spine. A little group laughed from inside the house. He heard the tinkling of glasses and silverware, the sounds of cars arriving on the crushed rock roadway in front of his Aunt’s house, a doorbell ring, and the buzzing of a small plane overhead. The place looked and smelled and felt dangerously normal.

“I learned to tame those demons in the Navy, Danny. I’m not going to lie to you, but serving in the armed forces is giving me skills I can take out there in the real world.”

Danny found himself chuckling in spite of the fact that it was going to piss Wilson off. “Yeah, don’t see many rubber boats around the res, cuz. You training to be a white water rafting guide in the Canyon? Shit, you coulda done that in high school.”

“Except I was getting stoned in high school, Danny. So were you. I heard you were a real mess.”

“Rumors of my demise have been over exaggerated. I look like a mess to you?”

Wilson abruptly stood. “No, Danny, you look like a fuckin’ hero just like your grandfather.”

His cousin left and joined the gathering inside the house.

Book Trailer

Enjoy this NOT PG excerpt from SEAL's Code narrated by J.D. Hart

YOU'RE INVITEDto the SEAL's CODE Release Party on June 30, 2015Click on the image to join the fun!!

About the Author

NYT and USA/Today Bestselling Author Sharon Hamilton’s SEAL Brotherhood series have earned her Amazon author rankings of #1 in Romantic Suspense, Military Romance and Contemporary Romance. Her characters follow a sometimes rocky road to redemption through passion and true love. Her Golden Vampires of Tuscany earned her a #1 Amazon author ranking in Gothic Romance.

A lifelong organic vegetable and flower gardener, Sharon and her husband live in the Wine Country of Northern California, where most of her stories take place.

Blurb: Ash would have given her life to save her teammates.Instead, they gave their lives to save hers.

Lieutenant Ramie Ashdyn is an anomaly, a person whose genetic makeup makes her stronger and smarter than the average human. She’s pledged her life to protect the Coalition, an alliance of thirteen planetary systems, but when a top secret operation turns bloody, she’s charged with treason and the brutal executions of her teammates.

The Coalition needs the information Ash’s team stole on their last mission, so they send in Commander Rhys “Rest in Peace” Rykus to get it. He’s the man who’s responsible for turning Ash into an elite soldier... and he’s a man who isn’t, never was, and never will be in love with the woman he trained. Or so he tells himself.

Ash wants nothing more than to clear her name and be the woman her former instructor wants her to be, but the enemy who killed her teammates did more than frame her for treason and murder: they telepathically silenced her mind, preventing her from saying anything that might point to the truth about what happened.

Now Ash is trapped and set to be executed, the truth dying with her. Unless she can prove her innocence. But taking that path could destroy the Coalition she’s sworn to preserve and protect...

Available for purchase at

Excerpt

“Please.” Ash’s
voice was so raw, so striated with emotional pain, that Rykus wasn’t sure if
the jolt he felt through his heart was her will breaking or his.

She had never
uttered that word in his presence before. He was almost certain she’d never
used it in her life. It wasn’t part of her vocabulary. It would have been seen
as a weakness on her home planet, just as it would have been a weakness on
Caruth.

But the word was
a submission, complete and irrevocable. All her walls were down. She was
pleading for his help.

She was pleading
for his help, and he was hurting her.

He released the
pressure on her arm.

A moment passed.
Then another. Then Ash’s green eyes opened.

She stared at
him.

He stared at her.

It felt as if
he’d been sucked into another dimension, one where the loyalty training had
flipped the axis of the universe. Instead of her being bound by his wishes, it
was the other way around. She held his free will in her hands. He could feel it
missing in the center of his chest. His heart beat within the hollow space,
lost, unable to orient itself, but one command, one word from her, could make
everything right again.

Her lips parted.
No sound came out, though he waited for it, waited for some command he could
carry out for her.

Is this what it
felt like to be a loyalty trained anomaly? He wasn’t in control. He wasn’t
thinking reasonably. If he had been, he wouldn’t have been this aware of how
her body fitted with his. He wouldn’t have been able to picture himself
lowering his mouth to hers. He could almost taste her. He wanted to taste that
beauty mark to the right of her lips.

He allowed
himself one weakness. He drew his thumb over the small, dark spot. It was real.
As real as the woman lying beneath him. He’d seen Ash naked once before. He’d
tried not to focus on her body back then, but he wanted to focus on it now. He
wanted to take his time surveying every inch of it.

And he wanted her
beneath him, vulnerable to his touch, his presence. Ash was always in control
of herself. He wanted to see her shatter…

About The Author

Sandy Williams has lived and breathed books all her life. When she was a teen, she was always the first to finish her class assignments so that she could read as much as possible before the bell rang. Her grades didn't suffer (much), and she was able to enroll in Texas A&M University. She didn't sneak in novels there, but her college lecture notes are filled with snippets of stories. After she graduated, she decided to turn those snippets into novels.

Sandy writes books with high-octane action adventure infused with a strong romantic element. She is best known for The Shadow Reader novels, an urban fantasy romance series about a human who can both see and track the fae. When she’s not reading or corralling her twin boys, she enjoys playing EuroGames like Dominion, 7 Wonders, and Agricola.

To become the man he’s meant to be, one cowboy will have to be the man he never wanted anyone to know he was…

Ryder Dent is a true-blue cowboy. A devoted son, husband and father, but one who is living a costly lie. When they were both young, Ryder and his closest female friend Andy thought they’d found the perfect solution to both their problems—she was single and pregnant, and he was secretly gay—so they got married and raised Jonas together.

When Ryder gets hurt at a party, his son’s new pediatrician comes to the rescue. The connection between Ryder and Dr. Declan Winters is sudden, powerful, and undeniable. Ryder loves Andy and the family they’ve created together—but they both need more. Can they pursue their hearts’ desire without destroying the life they’ve built and losing the son they love?

Available for purchase at

Excerpt

The
hottest guy I ever saw was playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” on the piano while
fifteen cagey preschoolers circled fourteen chairs. My father-in-law’s annual
Fourth of July shindig—the biggest event of the year—was a family picnic. We’d
set aside a play area for the littlest kids and I’d volunteered to supervise,
but the piano man blindsided me and I nearly missed an outrageous hair- pulling
incident.

Like
a too bright pair of headlights on a moonless night, he was all I could see.

Mayor
Calder Hamilton—a cartoon bear of a man with a white handlebar mustache—snuck
up on me with one of those painful backslapping man hugs.

“I
know that look, I see it every day when I look in the mirror. But how can that
be him? Last time I saw him he was half that size.”

Why
do people always say that? Is it some rite of passage? Am I going to be
surprised kids grow someday too? “We had to buy him a new pair of cowboy boots
just last week.”

“He’s
a fine-looking boy. Where’s Andrea?”

“She
doesn’t come to these things to hang around with me.” I glanced toward the
windows. “You’ll find her wherever there’s dancing.”

“She
leaves you in charge of Jonas?”

“Gosh,
yeah. Andi’s the social one. She likes to kick up her heels and I don’t mind if
she wants to have some fun.”

“So
have you met our new doctor yet? Isn’t he something? I have never seen anyone
play piano like that.”

“That’s Doctor Winters?” The doc had started playing “Pop Goes the
Weasel” like a Russian folk dance, all the while yelling Hai! Hai,! Hai! Hai! The music stopped and the chaos
started. Jonas ended up on another chair.

“Go,
Team Jonas!” I pumped my fist like a goofball.

“Yeah.
Go, boy, go!” Hamilton was already tipsy enough to be unaware he was shouting
right in my ear. It didn’t matter; I was going deaf from all the kids squealing
anyway. “I’d like to ask your help with something.”

“Sure
thing, Mayor. Shoot.”

“I
need you and your family in a campaign ad”

“My
family?” Good grief.
Bitterroot’s founding fathers would shit in their graves at such an idea. “I don’t think we’d make a very
good ad.”

“C’mon.”
He punched my arm. “You and Andrea are both attractive. Jonas is a cute kid.
You had to make some tough choices in the beginning, but look where you are
now.”

“Uh
. . . I don’t think—”

“I
need a family exactly like yours to represent my
campaign to the twenty-somethings. I need them to believe they’re important to
me.”

Me and
Andi? My
stomach did a full 360, front to back, as if I was on a Six Flags ride. Mayor
Hamilton wanted some picture-frame perfect family, and we were not it. Plus, we
hadn’t exactly voted for him. “I’ll ask Andi about it, but—”

“Andrea’s
dad just told me he’s backing me all the way again this next election.”

“Is
he?” That figures. Her dad
likes politicians to owe him.

“So you just tell her you’re
doing it, okay?”

“Sure,
I’ll mention it, but—”

Hamilton’s
wife, Sally, came up to collect him. “C’mon Cowboy. There’s someone I want you
to meet.”

She
grabbed his hand and, after a good-natured tug-of-war, they left together. I
breathed again. Andi’s dad ran one of the most successful ranches in the area.
If he wanted to see my family on a billboard, I’d have to figure a way to get
out of it or learn to say “cheese.”

It
was pretty hard to say no to Sterling Chandler. I’m not sure he understood the
word.

Shit.

The
new doc managed to make “Pop Goes the Weasel” sound like a funeral dirge and
the children all lurched around like little zombies. Then he turned it into a
raucous honkytonk song.

Who
was this guy?

Jonas
got eliminated fourth from last but he wasn’t crushed by the loss. His
attention shifted right away to the buffet, where the cater-waiters had
installed several trays of Texas-sized cookies, all colored with red, white,
and blue sugar crystals in honor of the holiday.

Musical
Chairs, the Survivor edition, came down to two particularly crafty-looking
femme fatales. One wore a jeans skirt, cowboy boots, and a pretty white blouse,
and the other had on a daisy-printed sundress with lacy socks and jelly shoes.
Lacy socks girl won by body-checking white blouse girl out of the way and
pouncing on the last chair. She gripped the seat so tight with both hands no
one could get her off it.

The
new doc consoled the runner-up with a box of big-block Legos and gave the
winner a play set with pink and purple Ponies but it seemed she thought she was
getting the chair as her prize. Eventually her mom pried her up and they all
wandered off to join the party outside.

Doc
Winters was left to tidy up. I figured I ought to help, being family and all.
Plus, it might get me out of small talk outside.

But
the doc was the best looking man I had ever seen up close. I was bound to mess
up and say something super stupid, and Andi was going to hear about it, and
then she was going to tease me for the rest of my life, because she was just
waiting for me to lose my shit over some guy.

And
Doc Winters, M.D., The Yankee Doodler?

He could
be the guy.

The Cowboys Series

About the Author

Z. A. Maxfield started writing in 2007 on a dare from her children and never looked back. Pathologically disorganized, and perennially optimistic, she writes as much as she can, reads as much as she dares, and enjoys her time with family and friends. Three things reverberate throughout all her stories: Unconditional love, redemption, and the belief that miracles happen when we least expect them.

If anyone asks her how a wife and mother of four can find time for a writing career, she’ll answer, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you give up housework.”

Friday, June 5, 2015

After years of living abroad, Maizy returns home to the only family she’s ever known—a

pack of wolves. When she confronts her childhood watchdog to see where they stand, his

resentment leaves her uncertain about where she really belongs.

Behind Denver’s charming smile is a tragic past—one that’s made his wolf savage and

unpredictable. Only Maizy has been able to tame that darkness, and when they’re reunited after many years apart, he no longer sees a child he once protected. She’s captivating and intelligent—a woman with the world at her fingertips and two suitors offering more than he ever could.

Torn between two worlds, Maizy must choose how her fairy tale ends. Tragedy, murder, passion, and imprisonment all collide with a heart-stopping twist.

Destiny will find you.

Release Date:

August 18, 2015

Available for pre-order at

The Seven Series

About the Author

This is the segment where you learn a little more about who I am, so here's what I can tell you: I drink copious amounts of vitamin water placed precariously close to my laptop while writing. These are two healthy habits I have no intention of breaking. I'm a transplant living in the south, but I was born in the 70's to a military dad who moved us around the world.

When I'm not writing (which is all the time), I'm hunting down Indie music, watching movies, reading, eating Tex-Mex, discovering new ways to humiliate myself bowling, and burning up my laptop battery on the Internet. I have a relaxed, easy-going personality and don't like drama. I live with a cat who thinks she is a dog, or a goat (she eats plastic, so I'm not sure which).

Throughout my life, I've had insomnia. Counting sheep never worked and eventually I would imagine those sheep were the sole source of food after an apocalyptic battle where only thousands survived. I made up stories in a futile attempt to bore myself to sleep. The problem was, I got so wrapped up in my "head stories" that I would continue them through the following nights, changing it up each time to make it more exciting. Eventually, I started writing my ideas down - creating short stories, and then I discovered my love for poetry.

It's almost embarrassing how many spiral notebooks and stacks of paper I have of poetry and lyrics.

Another passion: digital art. I design all my book covers, marketing, and series art. I'm a very visual person and pursued photography as an avid hobby for many years.

I am not a YA author (I feel like I have to state this only because I've had a few people ask), but I think it's wonderful there are so many books available to teens in Urban Fantasy and Paranormal.

I am finally doing what I have always wanted to do: giving my characters a pulse through writing full time. I focus on adult urban fantasy romance, but I don't like labels and I enjoy blending genres to break out of the confines of predictability.